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This paper examines newspaper cartels, a largely unoccupied field in media history, from the perspective of longevity. We analyse Finnish newspaper industry from the 1910s to 1970s and show that newspapers sought to regulate various aspects of competition, such as subscription prices, advertisement tariffs, and newsprint prices. Data indicates that political rivalry shaped the newspaper cartel collaboration until late 1950s: the cartel was set up by right-wing and centrist papers and, unlike in other Nordic countries, the Social Democratic press remained outside of the association until 1958. Political shocks of the Finnish Civil War in 1918 and the Second World War also changed the composition of the cartel. The era of private cartels in the newspaper industry gradually started to fade away as a result of anti-cartel laws in the 1960s and governmental anti-inflation measures in the 1970s. We conclude that the economics of newspaper industry and the cartelisation of the wider business environment, newsprint suppliers in particular, encouraged newspapers to co-operate with each other. The results of this article increase the understanding on the collaborative and competitive environment of newspaper companies, but also contributes to broader questions on cartels and their inner dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that readers' letters were selected and edited in late 19th-century Finnish newspapers for a variety of reasons. The criteria for selection and editing fit the four rules identified by professor of journalism Karin Wahl-Jorgensen for the selection of readers' letters in modern newspapers and it also demonstrates the 1890s newspapers' role as gatekeepers and the continuing professionalization of journalists. The editors considered the selection and editing of readers' letters demanding and frustrating, but they also saw themselves as men of principle, the defenders of the free word. The research sources include the correspondence columns and the editors' writing instructions to the readers in the 1890s press of the Grand Duchy of Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cholera was the emblematic disease of the nineteenth-century Europe. This article explores the cultural ramifications of cholera by concentrating on the ways in which public discourse participated in circulating information on the disease. It focuses on the reuse of texts about cholera in the Finnish press from 1860 to 1920. The most difficult cholera epidemics in Finland were the first ones in the 1830s and 1850s, and the number of casualties dropped significantly towards the end of the century. At the same time, however, cholera was discussed more than ever, and there was the rising curve of the references to cholera from the 1860s onwards. In Finland, the public discourse on cholera was also entangled with the rising nationalism towards the end of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of letters to newspapers developed into a nationwide and pervasive culture of local letters in the mid-1800s Finnish-language press. A characteristic feature of this culture was that the readers' letters published in the press were written in the names of local communities. Thus, the writer of the letter claimed to represent the entire local community. This interaction between different locations via the press transformed local into societal and societal into local. The culture of local letters had decisive influence on the development of Finnish society, nationalism and civic society in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]